Born in Stolberg, Karl Fred Dahmen is an unsung hero among the pioneers of post-war German art. Dahmen was an influential figure of the German Informel movement. His work typically consists of assemlages of found objects combined with applied matter.
Having completed his education at the School of Applied Arts, Aachen and an apprenticeship in advertising art, Dahmen was a frequent exhibitor at Documenta, Kassel, from where he launched his Informal work followings years of censorship under the Third Reich. In 1967, Dahmen was appointed Professor of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.
Dahmen, who had always regarded his application of abstraction as an open-ended experiment, forged an enormously versatile oeuvre, which the 2017 comprehensive retrospective exhibition, hosted by the MKM, Duisburg and the Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Duren, successfully set out to showcase.

Dahmen's work is present in countless museums in Germany and in the following museums abroad: Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museo de Arte Moderno Contemporáneo, Caracas; Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro; Museum Boijmans-van-Beuningen, Rotterdam; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Portland Art Museum, Oregon; Staatliches Museum, Luxemburg; The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo.